


the great unknown

by derryday



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, First Time, Hand Jobs, Ken Doll Android Anatomy | Androids Have No Genitalia (Detroit: Become Human), M/M, Post-Canon, Sex Pollen, Very mild body horror, Wire Play, discussion of Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:01:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21874105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derryday/pseuds/derryday
Summary: In which Connor has a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day... or does he?
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 9
Kudos: 144





	the great unknown

It occurred to Connor that 'Mark's Corner Store' was what Hank might call "a shithole". Looking around at the stained wallpaper and the grease-smeared floor, he was inclined to agree.

Hank was peering up at the single CCTV camera mounted to the wall. A quick scan revealed that it was recording, but that its firmware was several months out of date. From the back room came the shuffle and clatter of Detective Reed rummaging around, knocking things off of shelves just because he could, a classic intimidation tactic. 

The shopkeeper was appropriately nervous. (Mark Shepard--45 years of age--a criminal record made up almost entirely of hacking, save for one dropped charge of stalking. A former CyberLife tech, one of many that'd found themselves without jobs after the revolution.) 

Right now, he didn't look like he'd ever so much as laid eyes on CyberLife's sleek, sterile labs. His hair was lank and greasy and in need of a trim. A threadbare belt struggled to keep his trousers in place under his hanging gut. 

A greasy breakfast had left crumbs down the front of his shirt. Fries, from the look of the stains, though Connor couldn't be sure without an oral analysis--which he did not reach out to perform, since one of his daily objectives was to keep Hank's blood pressure on an even keel.

This man wasn't the first former CyberLife employee to get swallowed up by Detroit's Red Ice distribution rings. Connor was willing to bet his meager salary that he wouldn't be the last. 

Shepard scratched nervously at his day-old stubble. He craned his neck to see what Reed was doing, then glanced at the door, where three rookie officers were digging through his trash. Sweat beaded on his brow.

Detective Collins was trying to talk to him, asking about the comings and goings of his shop. His suspicious frown grew deeper with every distracted evasive answer.

Connor went over to Hank. He folded his hands behind his back and bounced a little on the balls of his feet. "I have a question, Lieutenant," he said primly, "about your idiolect. Would you call this place a 'shithole'?"

Hank gave him that look that Connor knew by now, exasperated and reluctantly fond. It was the one he wore when Connor was being "fucking weird" but had somehow come out the other side into charming.

"Who you callin' an idiot?" he said. 

"Idiolect, noun," Connor said, just to see the eyeroll that told him Hank knew exactly what an idiolect was. "A term to describe the unique speech habits of a single speaker of any language. In other words, the dialect of one individual person. Specifically, you."

"Whatever," Hank said. He rubbed a hand through his beard to hide his little smirk. "Yeah, it's a shithole. The floor probably hasn't been scrubbed since 1975."

Connor ran a quick search. His processors responded eagerly, tackling the small task with gusto. His body felt light and warm, the paths of his thoughts weightless and swift. 

It was a simple physiological response to Hank's presence, one he'd begun to notice long before he'd held Markus at gunpoint and he'd taken that last, staggering step into deviancy.

"This building was constructed in 2011," Connor said. "As such, it is impossible for the floor to--" 

And there, finally, was the laugh he'd been chasing. It was mostly a huff of air, a chuckle as Hank exhaled, shaking his head, his crow's feet deepening. 

"You're incorrigible," Hank said. He clapped Connor on the shoulder, the way he might have done to any other colleague, except--

Except his hand lingered. Connor's vision froze and turned gray. 

The sensor array in his shoulder came alive. Sparks raced along his artificial synapses. Hank's touch rubbed the fabric of his shirt and jacket against Connor's skin. He could feel the precise weight and warmth of Hank's palm, the broad fingers with their blunt nails...

Connor recalled how those fingertips felt in his hair, on the back of his neck, scratching gently at his scalp. He knew right down to the whorls of Hank's fingerprints how it felt when he touched the spinning glow of Connor's LED.

The moment passed, unnoticed. Color slipped back into Connor's vision. His cooling system kicked in and he had to exhale, expelling the heat before pulling in a new, cooling rush of air. Hank's hand slid off his shoulder.

"Alright, smartass," Hank said. "What have you got?" 

Connor felt the strange urge to clear his throat. He minimized an error report. "No fingerprints of note on the door, but the counter is full of prints from both Dennis Quaid and Frederic Dechamp. There are trace amounts of Red Ice on the floor."

The shopkeeper, who had been reddening steadily since the bell above the door had tinkled to announce the arrival of six armed cops and an android, went a deep shade of maroon. 

"That's not-- I don't know who those people are!" he sputtered. He was perspiring heavily and kept wiping his hands on the grubby front of his sweatshirt. "Either of them! I don't have that kind of time! Do you know how many customers come through here every day?!" 

"Not many," Connor said, "judging from the dust on the floor and the cobwebs on the ceiling fan."

Shepard opened and closed his mouth, then subsided into silence. Detective Collins snorted.

Reed emerged from the back room. "There's a terminal in there," he said to no one in particular, studiously not looking at Connor. 

"Hey," Hank said, ambling over to the counter. Hands in his pockets, he was the picture of lazy unconcern. "Hey, Shepard. If you don't know Quaid and Dechamp, then how come there's Red Ice on the floor?"

"I don't know anything about that!" Shepard said, pulling compulsively on the hems of his sleeves. His heart rate was still climbing. "I have no idea what you're even doing here! What do you want from me?!"

Hank smirked slightly. There was a predatory gleam in his eyes. "Let's just say a friend of yours got real scared in our interrogation room and made a deal."

Reed slammed both hands on the counter. Shepard yelped and jumped back, startled.

"Quit playing dumb!" Reed snapped. "We're on to you, it's only a matter of time until you break." He bared his teeth at Shepard in a parody of a smile. "And believe me, I'm looking forward to seeing it."

"Now, now," said Hank, collegially, putting a quelling hand on Reed's arm. "No need for that. I think Mr. Shepard here wants nothing more than to help us out."

Shepard looked from Reed's scowl to Hank's relaxed stance. He nodded cautiously. "Yeah, uh, I wanna help," he said, "I just don't _know_ anything, okay? I'd tell you if I did..."

"Listen, you piece of shit," Reed said. He leaned both hands against the counter, in a move that coincidentally exposed his holster when his jacket opened. "I personally couldn't care less how long we put you away for. Hell, maybe it's time to send a warning..."

Shepard made a little whimpering noise in the back of his throat. Fat droplets of sweat beaded on his forehead and neck. He wasn't going to last much longer. He shot a pleading glance at Hank.

Hank was retreating, letting Reed take the lead. He stepped back towards Connor and folded his arms, glancing at Reed with feigned disapproval. 

Even though there were 4.53 feet of air between them, Connor almost imagined he could feel the heat that radiated off his body--a healthy 97 degrees Fahrenheit, the last time they'd been skin to skin. 

(Just this morning, Hank had put his big hand on the back of Connor's neck and kissed him on the mouth, careful and gentle, pressing his other palm against the door Connor had been about to open. Sumo had trotted up to them, wagging his tail, then got bored and wandered away towards his bowl. 

For the first time, Connor thought he'd understood why humans closed their eyes when they kissed. He wanted to catalogue everything--the way Hank's fingertips rubbed at the sensitive nape of his neck, just above the port that sat there--each individual hair of Hank's beard, bristly and yet soft against his face...)

Connor blinked twice. His internal clock read several seconds later than before. He made a note to schedule a full diagnostic for his next stasis period.

This was not the time to be anything less than fully alert. It was rare to see Hank and Detective Reed work together so seamlessly, and he wanted to commit each moment to his memory banks. The 'good cop, bad cop' strategy was as old as criminal investigation itself. It was the first time Connor had seen it in action.

Hank's eyes were on him, questioning; he'd noticed Connor staring. He had responded favorably to winking before. Connor waited until Reed looked the other way, then briefly closed his right eye. 

Hank gave him an exasperated look. "Really?" he said under his breath, just loud enough for Connor's auditory receptors to pick up. "We're at work, you little shit!" 

But his heart pumped faster against his sternum, his heart rate climbing from 86 to 109 BPM. His blood pressure rose with it. The small capillaries in Hank's face expanded, letting more blood into his cheeks. The petechiae from drinking reddened first. 

Connor scanned Hank's familiar, worn features--the wrinkles and crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, crinkling in a suppressed smile. He cropped the image and archived it, buried it deep within his memory banks.

"I really don't know what to tell you," the shopkeeper said to Reed, pleading. "I don't know how the Red Ice got there, I'm just a, a nobody, I don't know anything!"

"Connor?"

Detective Collins was calling for him, leaning into the back room, propping the door open with his hip.

"The terminal," he said, almost apologetic and much more polite than Reed had been. "Would you...?"

A brief glance told him that Hank and Reed had Shepard well in hand. "Certainly, Detective," Connor said, and went over to the door.

It was a small, cramped room--little more than a storage closet. A bookshelf held a stack of old-fashioned paper files, along with some battered cardboard boxes. The terminal, by comparison, looked sleek and modern even though a quick scan revealed that it was an older model.

Connor picked his way past the bookshelf. The skin receded from his hand, slipping back past the cuff of his sleeve. He put the white and gray plastic of his palm onto the touchpad and connected to the terminal.

"This will only take a moment," he said to Collins, who nodded and walked back into the shop.

For a second, the foreign system unfolded around him as it was supposed to. A sprawling blueprint opened. Connor saw the silvery structure of the operating system, spiraling upwards. File directories sat like little clusters of fern leaves, ready to be unfurled. 

Then something shot out of the lower levels, a rush of muddy black. It raced up towards the touchpad and struck his palm. 

His vision glitched out in a shower of red and gray. Something batted aside his firewalls and imploded into his systems. A hot, unwieldy impulse twisted in him, waking up with a snarl. It was _in_ him, burrowing deep, slipping under artificial skin and corroding the plastic beneath...

And it _burned._ It scorched him with white-hot urgency, frying circuits and burning the coolant right out of him. Everything narrowed into a pinprick until nothing remained but the intrusion, the brute force of a single, powerful command.

_Warning: Systems overheating. Emergency shutdown imminent._

Connor felt himself fall, away from the terminal, into a chasm of writhing red. Everything went dark.

***

Connor went down like a sack of bricks. One moment he was standing at the terminal, skin peeling away from his palm as he pressed the white plastic of his fingertips to the touchpad.

Then he fell. He crashed to his knees in the cramped back room and tipped over onto his side. His head bounced off the floor with a sickening thud. 

Hank didn't realize he was already running until he clipped Reed and then the doorframe. He stumbled, the soles of his shoes slipping on the grimy floor. 

"Connor!" 

He hit his knees and skidded the rest of the way. His kneecaps protested with twin stabs of pain. The terminal glowed a placid, unaffected blue, lighting up the small room. 

He got his hands on Connor's head, fingers brushing the bright, accusing red of his LED. 

"Connor?! What's wrong?" Hank snapped. "Can you hear me? _Connor!"_

But Connor just lay there, stiff as a board. Hank shook him, wrapped his fingers in the lapels of his jacket--still the same goddamn CyberLife jacket, and Hank had been on a crusade to get him to wear something, _anything_ else, to play around with colors and patterns and materials, find out what he liked--

Connor's head lolled limply on the floor. "What the fuck is wrong with it?" Reed said. He was brushing off his coat like Hank had left a smear of booze on the sleeve or something.

"Fuck you," Hank snarled. He shook Connor again, fought against the unbending stiffness of his limbs to lever him into his lap. "Connor, goddamn it, say something!"

The LED didnt even spin anymore. It just burned red. 

Connor's eyes focused on him, then veered away. He wasn't blinking. He shook in Hank's grip, and his mouth twitched as he struggled to speak.

"S-software in-instabil-bility," Connor said. His voice fuzzed with static. 

He started shuddering violently. Tremors shook his body as though he were in the throes of a seizure. The heels of his shoes skidded across the floor. Every flinch knocked his head painfully against Hank's thigh. 

Heart in his throat, Hank let him go. His hands hovered, useless, unable to do anything but stare down at his android, rigid and falling apart--

"Connor, Jesus," he said, helplessly. He put his hand on Connor's forehead, then hissed and yanked his hand away at the heat that stung his palm.

This close, Hank could actually hear Connor's processors overclocking. It was an electronic hum that pitched higher within seconds. Heat seemed to pour off him, a cloud of unnatural warmth that filled the room. Hank's next inhale tasted of burned electronics.

Connor made a horrible garbled noise, something between a human groan and the overtaxed wail of a broken modem from the nineties. Patches of white appeared on his cheek, on his stiff, trembling hands. Then his skin melted away, receding, edged in brilliant blue.

His hair disappeared with his skin, leaving just the smooth, shining plastic of his skull. The LED bathed the white and gray plating in sickly pink.

But his shaking hands moved again, seizing hold of his clothing. A desperate yank later, he'd torn open his jacket and shirt. The buttons popped off, skittering across the floor. The skin on his stomach had receded too, leaving interlocking segments of plastic. He finally got his hands on himself and...

Connor _moaned._ His head fell back against the floor, his back arching. His hands scrabbled down his front, clicking and skidding against his chassis. The imitated fingernails dug deep, leaving matte scratches. 

He yanked open a panel on his stomach, exposing wires and tubing. Cables shone slickly in the neon light. Connor dug his fingers into himself, plunging deep with a squelch, parting thick strands of insulated wiring.

 _"Ohhh,"_ he groaned. The blue light of his heart blinked erratically, pulsing overtime. He spread his legs and pushed his fingers under the lower abdominal plate, shuddering.

Hank gaped at him. His breath stuck in his throat. An image rose in his mind, a grainy video he'd seen only once and then closed hastily, sweaty fingers slipping on his phone screen, cursing under his breath--

But not before he'd caught a glimpse of an android with their abdominal plate removed, wrist deep in their own biocomponents. They'd smiled enticingly into the camera, then moaned as their eyes fell shut, writhing under their own touch... 

\--And this was _not_ the time to remember his solitary foray into android porn. Hank shook his head sharply. "Con?" he said, nearly a whisper.

Connor frantically dug and yanked at his wiring. Staticky, inhuman noises were wrenched from his throat, needy whimpers and frustrated snarls. He shoved at his trousers, hips twisting, and pushed them down past the flat, featureless mound of his crotch. His thirium pump regulator was glowing red.

"Jesus Christ," someone said. 

"I didn't do anything!" the shopkeeper babbled, terrified and backing away. "It just fell! I'm not--" 

Then Ben was suddenly kneeling next to them. He shrugged off his jacket and dropped it over Connor's middle, covering the flickering red and blue of his innards and the lubricant that slicked his plastic hands.

"What the fuck?" Hank said shakily. 

The other officers had formed a loose semi-circle around the door. That fucking asshole Reed had his gun halfway out of his holster. The rookies were staring at Connor, open-mouthed and silent. 

Abruptly, Hank's helpless panic tipped over into fury. His hands curled into fists, ready to punch in the teeth of the first one of them who got close enough. "Don't just stand there!" he shouted, half rising onto one knee. "Fucking do something!"

Ben was talking into his radio, tilting his head towards his shoulder. "Someone get IT down here to run a diagnostic on this terminal. Not an android," he said sharply. "We've got an officer down..."

Connors LED still burned red. It flickered in and out at uneven intervals. Under the bulk of Ben' jacket, his jerky movements looked obscene.

His fingers found something, some previously undiscovered sensitive spot. He froze, arching up, his knees falling helplessly open. Connor's eyes closed, his head tipping back. His hands stilled.

For a second there was silence. Then Connor whimpered, an astonishingly human noise of frustration. His body started shivering anew. Under Ben' jacket, his hands resumed their desperate, uncoordinated motions.

He bared his teeth, gasping in breath after breath in a frantic effort to cool down--

Hank didn't realize he'd gotten up until he was already in motion. He was across the room in seconds, Ben yelping and ducking out of his way. Then he had his hands fisted in the greasy fabric of Shepard's shirt and slammed him against the wall. 

"Alright, you fucker," he snarled. "You better start talking."

Shepard was white with terror. His eyes were huge and bulging in his sweaty face. "I don't know what happened, I swear!" he babbled. He pulled weakly on Hank's grip on his collar. "I was using that terminal just this morning and there was nothing wrong with it!"

"Try again, asshole!" Hank shouted, shaking him roughly. "Tell me right now what you did to him!"

"Nothing!" Shepard wailed. "That wasn't meant for it! That was my private-- it was just a side project--"

 _"Hhhhaaannk,"_ Connor gurgled. His voice box was glitching badly, static and electronic pops chopping apart the single word. 

\--And Hank was back on the floor, on his poor old knees. He bit back his grimace of pain. "Connor?" he said urgently. He grabbed Connor's shoulder. Connor's shaking rattled through both of them. "You with me?"

Connor tried to speak. All that came out was an electronic buzz. Their gazes caught and held. His hands moved continuously, helplessly.

His wrist turned and he groaned, hips twitching, chasing the new stimulus. The flicker of awareness fizzled out, his eyes rolling back into his head.

"--gonna burn himself," Ben was saying, urgently. He shook Hank's shoulder, Hank realized dimly, a jostling motion that didn't quite reach him. "Hank!"

Hank shook himself and scrubbed both hands down his face. Helplessness swamped him, rattling his breath and forcing a lump into his throat. "I don't get it," he said, hating the way his voice wobbled. "He-- if something's going this wrong, he should be shutting down..."

"Maybe he can't," Ben said. "Maybe whatever was in that fucking terminal is going to burn him--"

The idea came to him on the heel of Ben's words, cutting cleanly through his panic. He nearly gasped in relief. 

He wedged one hand between the floor and Connor's back. Hank braced his knees against the floor and heaved, turning Connor over onto his side.

The back of Connor's head looked naked without his hair. Hank could see the seams where the pieces of his chassis interlocked. And there was the port at the back of his neck, black and shining.

Hank's breath came in short, sharp bursts. He didn't have much time. "Fuck, okay," he said, wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers. "Connor--I'm sorry, I gotta do this."

He touched the port, then hooked his fingernail under the plastic edge, pulling loose some of the segmented plating. Thin cables ran up to Connor's head, bundled into neat clusters. Orange and red indicator lights flickered on the few biocomponents Hank could see.

Hank's skin crawled. It felt fundamentally wrong, doing this when Connor was so out of it that he couldn't object-- and under Gavin fucking Reed's nose, of all people...

"Okay, okay," Hank said shakily. He tried to fit his finger into the port. "You're-- you're gonna be alright, you hear me? You'll-- shit, fuck, sorry!"

Connor wailed. He squirmed, flailing one arm out blindly, some half-aware part of him realizing what Hank was about to do. He managed to fasten his fingers around Hank's sleeve. They left a smear of lubricant that smelled strongly of burned plastic. 

"Fuck," Hank said. His hands were trembling. He reached for the port again. "Connor--"

He pressed in. Overheating wires stung his fingers. Connor's body seized once, then went still. 

He didn't slump bonelessly like a human might have. His hands just froze. One was still deep inside his belly, the other hung suspended where he'd grabbed for Hank's sleeve. 

He locked up completely. Even his eyes froze, wide as they were, staring at nothing.

His LED flickered red, then yellow, then red again. Hank watched, heart in his throat, as it finally started spinning again. It dimmed down to a dull, muted orange. 

A faint whir started, pitching slowly higher. Connor was rebooting, his CPU nudging one biocomponent to life at a time. His eyes sank half-shut. 

When Hank pushed gently on his arm, the shoulder joint went pliant. Gently, Hank lowered Connor's arm to the floor. 

"Reset button?" Ben asked. 

"Yeah," Hank said. He was breathing heavily, his shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. He scrubbed a hand down his face, wincing. "I-- my car. Help me get him into the car?"

"Sure," Ben said. He started to pull his jacket away, then hesitated. "Um--"

"I've got him," Hank snapped, harsher than he'd meant to. He put the bulk of his body between Connor and the shop, then retrieved Ben' jacket.

Lubricant had smeared all the way up to Connor's wrist. Hank grimaced in sympathy as he carefully pulled Connor's inert hand out of his innards. He stared, all little queasy, as thick cables and finer conductors slid slowly back into place, closing the gaps Connor's fingers had left. 

He didn't seem to have done any damage to himself, though what the fuck did Hank know? At least the pump regulator and his heart were both blinking faintly yellow like they were supposed to, as Connor had told him, after a hard reset.

The piece of plating that Connor had torn off felt cool to Hank's touch. He wiped it clumsily with his sleeve, then fit it back on as best he could. The edges wouldn't seal properly, and there was no satisfying click-hiss of the vacuum seal engaging, but at least it stayed in place.

He pulled Connor's jeans back up, the back of his neck growing hot under the stares he felt there. For a moment he put his hand on Connor's forehead--a useless gesture of comfort, since Connor did not know that everyone had heard the clink of metal as Hank fastened his belt buckle.

Hank took a deep breath and let it out slowly, bracing himself. When he took his hand off Connor's forehead, he thought that perhaps he was no longer quite as hot as he'd been.

The officers in the doorway were silent. One of the rookies had her mouth hanging open stupidly. Hank squashed his anger, biting back sharp words, and got his arm around Connor's shoulders.

Even Reed didn't say anything. Instead he'd seized hold of Shepard's shoulder, holding him firmly in place. The only things that broke the silence were the shopkeeper's labored breathing and the tick of cooling plastic.

"Here," Ben said. "I'll take his legs."

The lump in Hank's throat was back. He nodded, grateful for Ben's calm pragmatism. 

He hooked his arms under Connor's armpits, wincing at the twinges in his knees. Together they lifted Connor's still body and carried him out of the back room.

***

Sumo could tell something was wrong. He tiptoed around Hank's bed as much as his bulk would allow, sniffing at Connor's limp hands and whining softly.

"He's gonna be okay," Hank said firmly, as much to Sumo as to himself. "He's just rebooting. For a machine that smart, that's bound to take a while, right?"

Sumo's tail wagged once, hesitantly. Hank scratched behind his ears and Sumo panted at him, tongue lolling, then padded back out into the hallway in search of his food bowl.

Hank sat back in his chair, wiping his palms on his jeans. Connor was lying on his back, stiff and still without his skin. 

Hank had removed his shoes and, although he knew Connor couldn't feel cold, he'd draped his shirt over his naked chest and stomach. There was a blanket draped over the foot of the bed. If Connor took much longer to wake up, Hank might just give in to his grating urge to do _something,_ anything, and cover Connor with it.

For a while he had fretted over whether or not Connor might prefer a pillow. He'd carefully lifted him to slide one under his neck. A moment later he'd removed it again, cursing himself for moving Connor's head at all. Then he'd felt foolish. It wasn't like Connor was a human with head trauma. 

By now, the smell of melting plastic and fried circuits had mostly faded. Connor's eyes were still half closed. The LED still flickered in and out in the same dull orange. 

It was one hell of a long reboot. Hank wished, not for the first time, that he knew more about androids.

As it was, all he could do was wait. Half an hour had passed since he'd carried Connor into his bedroom with Ben's help. Ben had driven off right after, already on the phone with the IT department.

In the kitchen, Sumo drank noisily from his bowl. It had begun to snow again, thick, fluffy flakes that floated down from the sky and settled right in his fucking backyard.

He'd have to get out there and shovel the driveway again. Though it was entirely possible that Connor would insist on doing it instead, with that fierce, curious light in his eyes that never failed to make Hank's old heart stutter.

Connor was fascinated by all things human. Hank had taken him to the nearby store once, and Connor had stared at the dingy walls, the scratched linoleum floor and the aged fluorescent lights like it was the fucking Ritz. 

He walked Sumo with gusto, never tiring of the big mutt's company. He'd catalogued the different types of mold growing in Hank's bathroom and ordered supplies to exterminate all of them. Sometimes, when Hank let his guard down, Connor even snuck in a load of laundry or two.

He'd told Hank once, in the darkness of his bedroom, that he still enjoyed fulfilling objectives and completing tasks off a list. The difference was that now that he was deviant, he could compose those lists himself.

"It gives me a sense of accomplishment," Connor had said, haltingly, into the scant few inches between them. His LED had spun yellow. "I suppose that some directives of my programming will never go away completely..."

"Hey, that's fine," Hank had said gruffly, wary of saying something wrong. "Whatever makes you happy."

Connor had looked at him, silent. Words had hung between them, heavy and unspoken: he'd only just figured out that he was a living being. He was still working on cataloguing what happiness felt like for him.

Hank had smoothed his hair back. That damn curl kept springing back to brush Connor's forehead. But his mouth ticked up in that small, nearly invisible smile.

Hank waited. The LED blinked in and out. In the kitchen, Sumo trotted over to his bed and flopped down on it with a doggy sigh. 

Thoughts ricocheted off the insides of Hank's skull. What if Connor had fatally overheated before Hank had pulled his head out of his ass and realized how to help him? _Had_ he helped, or made everything worse and trapped Connor in some sort of limbo? 

And what the fuck was _taking_ him so long? Maybe he was stuck, and needed help to finish booting back up. Help that Hank couldn't give him. He was fucking useless.

His phone rang, startling him enough that he yelped. "Jesus," he muttered and checked the caller ID: it was Ben. He swiped at the touchscreen and brought the phone up to his ear.

"Ben," he said. He kept his eyes on Connor's still form. "What have you got for me?"

"It's a virus," Ben said without preamble. Hank could hear the noises of the bullpen in the background, the chatter and ringing phones. "IT got it out of Shepard's computer. Apparently it's some pretty ingenious tech."

A virus. A chill trickled down Hank's spine. He rubbed a hand through his beard, swallowing down the dread that congealed in his stomach.

"Okay," he said, when he was sure his voice would come out steady. "So what is this virus?"

"Shepard used to work for CyberLife," Ben said. "Probably how he knew how to build this thing. It affects the, uh-- well, I'm told it's kind of like an android's nervous system. IT is losing their shit."

"Okay," Hank said again, impatient. "So what does it do?"

"This is all theoretical, you understand," Ben hurried to explain. "Nothing like this has ever been studied before. But the tech I spoke to is fairly sure that it makes the android..." He coughed. "It simulates..."

On the bed, Connor's LED winked in and out in a slow, steady pulse. "God fucking damn it, Ben," Hank snarled. "It simulates what?" 

"It's..." Ben sighed. "It's a powerful aphrodisiac."

Hank froze, staring at Connor's still face. "A what?" 

He could almost hear Connor's smug explanation of the term. "Aphrodisiac, noun. A substance that stimulates the consumer and makes them crave sexual contact..."

But Connor was silent and motionless in bed. Instead, he had Ben to contend with, who now cleared his throat several times and finally said, "It simulates sexual arousal."

"No shit," Hank snapped, then made himself pause. He rubbed wearily at the bridge of his nose and breathed out a sigh. It wasn't Ben's fault that he'd drawn the short straw in breaking the news to Hank. 

"Alright, Ben," he said, when he was sure his voice would come out steady. "What else?"

"Well, there's a twist," Ben said. "This, uh, arousal-- well, Connor's not human," he blurted out, like Hank didn't know that. "It's not a drug that'll wear off. He can't metabolize it out of his system. The virus will keep going until it destroys him, or until he..."

Hank stared out the window at the falling snow. "What?"

"It won't just go away," Ben insisted, like Hank hadn't understood him. "It'll make him..."

The edges of his phone cut into Hank's palm. "What, Ben?" he gritted out.

"The parameters are very clear. The infected android needs to... to become intimate with somebody. To-- to be stimulated, uh, manually-- by another person until he, uh... reaches sexual release." 

Ben sounded deeply, painfully uncomfortable, but he squeezed the words out one by one, determined to do his duty both as a police officer and as Hank and Connor's friend. "Once that's happened, the directive spins itself out. There's a backdoor in the subroutine that will then allow the android's systems to detect and quarantine the malware."

"Fucking hackers with their fucking backdoors," Hank heard himself say, as though from quite far away, thinking of Kamski. 

He clutched the phone tightly, unsure of what he'd just heard. His blood roared in his ears. He licked his lips and asked, dumbly, "What do you mean, it-- it won't go away?"

Ben paused. "It disables all cooling systems and overclocks the central processing unit," he said. "Connor is going to burn himself."

The noise in his ears cut off. Hank went cold all over, staring at Connor's half-closed eyes without really seeing them. "I-- _burn_ himself?"

"The techs said there's no way an android can survive that kind of sustained heat buildup for long when shutdown protocols are disabled. He's got another hour, maybe two." Ben paused. "You pressing the reset button likely bought him some time."

Hank wiped his free hand down his face. His phone felt like a lead weight, and for a moment he considered just dropping it, and leaning over Connor's still form to smooth his hair back again, gently, and brush his fingertips over his forehead.

 _He has to be stimulated,_ Ben's words echoed mercilessly in Hank's mind. _He has to..._

Jesus fucking Christ. It'd been supposed to be just a normal fucking day at work. 

"You should call CyberLife," Ben said. Something in the background rustled loudly. Hank thought he heard Chris' voice for a moment. "They'll send someone to pick him up. Maybe they can fix this."

"No," Hank said, immediately and without hesitation. Some of his numb shock tore open. "He doesn't-- no."

Ben sighed, frustrated. "Hank, if he needs help that you can't give him--"

 _Who says I can't?_

The thought hit him without warning. Hank had to choke down a hysterical urge to laugh. 

"Ben, he's fucking scared of that place, okay?" he said instead, struggling to keep his voice steady. "I'm not gonna hand him over to them while he's offline and defenseless."

Ben was silent for a moment. "Hard to imagine Connor being scared of anything, let alone some nerds with glasses."

"Yeah, well, having shutdown held over your head as punishment for failure will do that to a guy."

"Fuck," Ben said. "Okay, I get it. Want me to send someone from IT?"

A stranger, here in their house, when Connor was this vulnerable? Hank shook his head, though Ben couldn't see it. "No. Just... email me the files, if you've got any."

"I'll send you the diagnostics we got out of that terminal." Ben paused. In the background, the bullpen bustled with activity, distant chatter filtering through the phone. 

"Hank," Ben said, with sudden urgency, "IT's still working. They-- they haven't given up. I'll call you the second they find something else."

His voice sounded closer, like he'd hunched over his phone. Hank could almost see the hard, determined glint in his eyes. "Yeah," he said. 

"Just--," Ben let out a sharp, worried breath. "Take care of him. Call me if anything changes."

 _Take care of him._ Again Hank bit back an unhinged giggle. "Sure thing," he said and disconnected the call. A bit rude, perhaps, but Ben was used to worse from him. 

Sumo came wandering back into the bedroom. He nosed at Connor's hand again, and when that did not yield any results, he put his great head on Hank's knee and released a huge sigh.

"You and me both, buddy," Hank told him.

He scratched Sumo behind the ears and right above his collar, where he liked it best. Sumo's tongue lolled out, drool dripping onto Hank's trousers. 

Nerves jittered around in Hank's stomach. Together, they waited.

***

_Warning: Internal temperature critical. @#$°F._

The first thing Connor did was to breathe in.

Heat choked him, a damp, muggy warmth that clung stickily to his biocomponents. Coolant sat unmoving and thick in his circulatory system. He could only pull in air in tiny, wounded gulps, too shallow to bring real relief.

He was horizontal, lying on something firm but pliant. A bed. His torn shirt had been arranged to cover his chest. Soft cloth under his fingertips...

Sparks raced along his nervous system. His synapses burst with input, overloading his RAM with a cacophony of noise. Every inch of his chassis was hypersensitive, a nerve exposed. 

Connor squirmed.The fabric of his clothes rubbed ticklishly against his body--the same 70% cotton, 30% polyamide blend for his shirt and trousers. The sheets under him were wrinkled, and the folds of fabric drove knife-thin lines of almost-pain into his back. 

The woven fibers and threads of his sleeves clung mercilessly to his arms, making the sensors throb helplessly in an effort to keep up. The input felt-- wrong. Precarious, teetering on the edge of unbearable. 

Too much, too close. A groan wrenched itself from his vocalizer, staticky and slow. He twitched weakly and realized with startling abruptness that he wasn't wearing his skin.

He opened his eyes. Hank's face came into view, a stern furrow of worry on his brow. Connor's vision glitched out into a shower of pixels. It took a whole 2 seconds for the tiny cameras in his pupils to refocus.

Hank said something. Connor heard his voice, saw his mouth move in the shape of his name, but couldn't understand the word. What came out of Hank's mouth was garbled nonsense.

_Warning: Internal temp#%@..._

The hazy veil that the reset had left tore open. Panic set in, sudden and fierce. A full body tremor shook him. His chassis scraped against his clothes. 

The discomfort tipped over into pain, a burning sensation that burrowed hotly into the last few free crevices of his RAM. Connor opened his mouth, and a keening noise came out, loud and protesting. 

His limbs flopped weakly. He didn't have the strength to turn over-- and there wasn't anywhere _to_ turn anyway, even if he somehow managed to rip off his clothing and roll off the bed-- the air would feel thick and clumpy around him, individual molecules scratching harshly at his chassis...

"--Connor!" Hank said again. This time, Connor understood him. Hank put his hand on Connor's shoulder and shook him slightly, jostling his prone form. "Connor, hey, calm down, you're okay, you're home..."

It took a moment for the heat of Hank's palm to bleed through Connor's clothes. The cluster of sensors on his clavicle sputtered to life. It lapped up the touch, greedy for something that wasn't the burning. Hank's palm was a precise 99 degrees warm--his fingerprints were not quite discernible through the fabric--his thumb rubbed a little circle on Connor's shirt--

Connor moaned, broken and low. He turned towards Hank, hitching up his shoulder, struggling to trap his hand there. He wanted, no, _needed_ to feel all the layers of Hank's touch: his pulse, throbbing faintly at the base of his palm, his broad fingertips, the clipped edges of his nails...

Hank's hand sprang away like he'd been burned. Connor's vocalizer emitted a staticky noise of protest. "Shit," Hank said, eyes wide. "Did I--? Connor, you okay?"

Hank was sitting on the edge of the bed-- _their_ bed: Connor recognized the ceiling, the window, the smell of Hank's aftershave lingering in the pillows. 

He looked harried. The bags under his eyes were more pronounced and his hair was mussed, like he'd been running his fingers through it. His gaze was frantic, worried.

Connor scraped together a small shred of composure and sent a command to his leg. It raced along his nerves and dissipated into numbness. Somehow, his thigh twitched anyway, dragging itself across the sheets. Then his knee was pressed snugly to Hank's thigh.

Connor sighed in relief. A shiver went through him, so strong flat it was almost a spasm. The bed frame creaked. Warm, Hank was so very _warm,_ a clean, healthy kind of warmth, not the sticky heat that clogged his systems...

He found that this time, unlike back at Shepard's place, he could talk. "F-fi-fine," he ground out. "Do-don't w-worry--"

That got him a small smile, there and gone in an instant. "It's a little late for that," Hank said. "Do you remember what happened?"

Connor was struggling to turn towards Hank, onto his side. His extremities wouldn't cooperate. Commands and error reports fired back and forth, useless little lights on the glitching horizon of his awareness.

"H-Ha-ank," he managed to grind out. The joints and pistons in his neck scraped against each other, but he finally managed to turn his head. The pillow pressed against his cheek.

If only Hank were closer... pressed against him, his damp body heat fogging up the smooth plastic of Connor's chassis--kissing him, thrusting his tongue deep into Connor's mouth...

The urgency swelled and broke, shattering against the halted, crystallized flow of thoughts in his mind. Connor keened, a high, broken sound. His insides burned with icy fire. A writhing mass of misfiring biocomponents was vying for his attention, swarming every corner of his RAM. 

Hank was saying something, Connor's name perhaps, his mouth moving urgently. Connor couldn't hear him. 

An objective crashed into his CPU, far from the usual smooth slide that he used for his daily tasks and mission parameters. This was forceful, a jagged, painful intrusion. Air rushed out of him in a choked moan, carrying the burned stench of slowly frying electronics. 

_He had to touch Hank._

He _had_ to. There was nothing and no one else that'd bring him relief. The impulse was so strong that a bolt of pain shot down his spine. He--

He had to move. He had to roll over and reach out, pull Hank down onto the bed with him, until Hank's weight pressed him snugly into the mattress and the high whine in his ears finally stopped--

Connor managed another squirm. His limbs responded sluggishly. The edges of his vision flickered with oversaturated color. "To-touch me," he gritted out, barely recognizing his own voice.

Hank hesitated, then gave him back his hand, a snug press over Connor's shoulder. This time, his thumb hit that cluster of sensors that'd begged for his touch earlier. 

More of that clean, spreading warmth hit him, the simple press of body heat. Connor's vision washed out into blinding white.

"--hey, hey--shit! Connor!" Hank sounded panicked. He was shaking Connor's shoulder, harder this time, jostling him. 

Connor felt the press of each individual finger, how Hank's palm fit around the ball of his shoulder and the shaking rubbed his shirt across his skin. 70% cotton, 30% polyamide. The fibers didn't hurt anymore. 

He sucked in two quick, gasping breaths that did nothing to cool him down. Something was wrong, something was seriously wrong, but Hank's hand felt so good--

(Connor's fingers tingled, a phantom sensation. He could almost feel the rich, variegated texture of Hank's skin on his fingertips, under his nails, all over him. He needed both of Hank's big hands on him, _in_ him, the fine lines of his fingerprints and his thick, sturdy thumbs...

Hank's mouth on his, licking the inside of his cheek, possessive and tender by turns. His beard, rasping against Connor's lips and chin. Rubbing roughly at the helpless bob of his Adam's apple until Connor could do nothing but _feel_ each individual bristle as it scraped a path of exquisite torture across Connor's chassis--)

Hank was staring at him. His eyes were bright with barely contained fear. Connor realized he'd zoned out again, and his internal clock had ticked past a whole 37 seconds. "So-so-sorry," he gritted out.

"Don't apologize," Hank said, a bit shakily. _"Shit._ Are you--?"

Error reports and temperature warnings hurled themselves at him, silent claps of thunder. They faded into gray along the edges. Connor minimized them, but they popped right back up. 

"I'm in-in-infected," he managed. "That t-t-ter-terminal..."

"Yeah," Hank said quickly. His fingers squeezed Connor's shoulder, a delicious, grounding pressure. "IT got some diagnostics out of it, Ben sent them to me. Wanna see them?"

Connor nodded. He bit back a whimper and braced himself for the loss of Hank's warmth. But Hank just leaned over and wrestled his phone out of his back pocket one-handed, his palm never leaving Connor's shoulder.

It took Connor an embarrassingly long moment to interface with the phone. A chill swept over him, sharp and cruel through the syrupy heat. Somehow, the phantom damp that clung to his insides was turning into shivers.

A copy of the terminal's systems opened up before him. They looked flat and gray--it was just a scan. In the lower levels sat the red, writhing corruption, dissected and laid out neatly. 

No serial number signatures marked the neat work. IT hadn't let any more androids near the thing, tasking the humans with analyzing the virus instead. That they'd gotten it done so fast was remarkable.

Information was a soothing trickle into his hard drives. The unnatural cold spread further, a spider-webbing pattern like frost coating a window. Hank's touch turned into two searing pinpoints of warmth--his palm on his shoulder, steady and grounding, and the rougher fabric of his jeans against Connor's knee.

"Oh," Connor said, for lack of anything better to say, and closed his eyes. He was still shaking, a low shiver that heightened to teeth-rattling tremors every 2.8 seconds.

"Ben said it's... it's an aphrodisiac," Hank said, nerves forcing him to talk. "Makes you, uh. Makes you need to..."

"I-I know," Connor said. He gritted his teeth, hard plastic on plastic, but it didn't help.

His core temperature hitched up another notch. The numbers kept pixelating, unraveling. The seams where the edges of his plating overlapped felt white-hot, like they might burst under the pressure. 

A vague memory came to him, a far cry from his usual perfect, high-definition recollection.

Lying on a greasy floor, his skin gone. His hands, shaking, buried wrist-deep in his abdomen, tangling his fingers in slick wires and _pulling._ A relentless struggle towards a release that wouldn't come...

He'd tried to fix it himself, he'd _tried._ But his own touch had only stoked the flames higher. He'd done everything he could: he had found all the wires and clusters, the sensitive seams of biocomponent #894v5, the rubbery texture of #463g6's shell that, when pressed, clung deliciously to the tiny cogs and pistons underneath...

Nothing had worked. It'd only made him more desperate. Then Hank had done something, fumbling at Connor's neck. He must've performed a hard reset. The next thing Connor remembered was looking up at his worried face from their bed.

The corruption was on him, all over him. But he couldn't purge it from his systems.  
Its black and red sludge consumed him. It drove into his skull like a long spike, blocking out everything but a bottomless, writhing hunger, and he-- he was so _cold,_ why was he so cold?

"Ben said... he said you'll overheat," Hank said quietly. "It'll--" His throat clicked wetly as he swallowed. "It'll burn you."

Focus, Connor thought, a silent shout into the shivering, fraying mess that was his consciousness. _Focus. Think._ He was CyberLife's most advanced prototype, and he would not die like this, senselessly, burning out like a star while Hank was forced to look on helplessly. 

There had to be a way out of this. _Think, think..._ A greasy film clung to his mind. He had to find a solution. There had to be something they could do...

Oh.

Connor almost wanted to laugh. He might have, if the impulse hadn't gotten scrambled on its way to his vocalizer. The corruption chopped it into stuttering shreds. Instead he moaned again, thin and plaintive.

"N-n-not if I..." he stammered, struggling even with those simple words. "If we..."

Hank yanked his hand away. Connor whimpered in protest as the pinpoint of warmth on his shoulder left him. His limbs were locking up, wracked with cold. The seams of his plating stung hotly, webbing across him in searing lines.

"Fuck, Connor," Hank blurted out. He raked his fingers through his hair. 

His eyes were wide with disbelief. But his mouth pressed into a pinched, resigned line--so he'd had the same thought, and knew what they had to do.

"You're completely out of it," he said. His hand hovered, uncertainly. Connor whined high in his throat and strained towards it, and finally Hank put his hand back on Connor's shoulder. "You expect me to fucking touch you like this?"

He let out a long, low moan. Hank's warmth seeped into him. It sunk down into his chest and curled around his artificial heart. Little trickles of it slipped into his chilled extremities. 

Connor opened his eyes to thin slits. A few shallow breaths later, he was ready. He gathered the tattered remains of his willpower and managed to roll halfway over, a weak flop that pressed him more snugly to Hank's side. 

His skin came back. It melted over his chassis, pink and dotted with moles. His hair rematerialized and scraped softly against the pillow. It was like trying to hold water in his cupped palms, but Connor clung to that little bit of control with grim determination.

"Th-there," he said, trying to smile. "It sh-sh-should be mo-more pal-palatable now."

"Jesus _Christ,_ I don't care about your skin," Hank snapped. He stroked Connor's shoulder, gently. "I just meant-- we've never..."

They'd had sex before, of course. Oh, had they ever. It was one of the things that made Connor extremely grateful for his eidetic memory. Wherever he was, and however much time passed, he could recall with perfect clarity the slide of Hank's penis through his fist, the way Hank squirmed desperately when Connor ran his thumb around the slick glans...

They'd gone to bed together, and Connor had touched him all over, hungrily monitored his heart rate and catalogued every twitch of Hank's half closed eyelids and smelled the breath that escaped Hank's mouth in a whimpering rush when he came, spilling his seed all over Connor's hand.

And Hank had kissed him, and ran his hands up his sides and trailed his fingers down Connor's chest and curiously touched the smooth, featureless mound of his crotch. But nothing more. Not yet.

Connor was fairly sure that Hank knew, in theory, what android sex entailed--that Connor would have to open up his chassis for him and that Hank would get to touch his most vulnerable parts.

They hadn't done it yet, though. Connor hadn't wanted to spook him. Hadn't dared to remind Hank just who--and what--he'd invited into his bed. 

There was a difference between kissing Connor slow and deep, the way Hank liked to do before bed, and sticking his hand into his electronic guts.

"Ple-ease," Connor said. The single word gurgled into an electronic buzz. "P-p-please, Ha-Hank, please..."

It was almost humiliating, begging like this. But he couldn't help it. The last of his composure stretched like a fraying thread. His memory seemed to steam and creak under the strain. He wanted, he _needed_ Hank's hands on him--

"Jesus," Hank said again, helplessly. His throat worked as he swallowed. His thumb rubbed as slow circle over the jut of Connor's clavicle. "Con, I-- I want to help, I do, but I just don't know if--"

He took a deep breath. "I don't want to do something you'll regret."

"C-cou-could never re-re-regret," Connor forced out. "No-not y-you."

Hank exhaled slowly. His mouth was tight with uncertainty, but resolve firmed in his blue eyes. "Okay," he said. He stroked Connor's shoulder. "If-- if you're sure. Okay."

Hank touched him. He put both hands on Connor's chest, slid one down to his stomach and traced the opened and torn off buttons of Connor's shirt.

Sparks exploded behind Connor's eyes. His vocalizer produced a garbled noise that was not in any way human-sounding, just a staticky whine of overtaxed systems. He wanted to grab his belt and yank it off, but his hands slipped hopelessly on the smooth sheets with no hope of reaching his trousers or even his shirt. 

"Shh," Hank said, a little shaky still, but soothing. "Here, let me."

He pushed aside Connor's shirttails and undid his belt. He rubbed two careful circles into the dips above Connor's manufactured hip bones, then pulled his pants down.

The belt buckle scraped across his heaving stomach on the way down. It left a hot, prickling trail of sensation, and Connor shouted, wordless, his hips jerking up off the bed.

Hank was looking at him, brow furrowed in concern. "Shit," he said, his hands held up between them, not quite daring to touch him again. "Connor--?"

"I'm f-fi-fine," Connor stammered. "Ple-please don't s-stop."

From somewhere, he found a small reserve of untapped strength. One of his hands landed shakily on his stomach. Connor dug his fingers into the plating, struggling to pull it off. The plate stuck. He growled in frustration and yanked on it, plastic creaking, until finally a cool draft of air hit his insides and he was bared to Hank's gaze.

He made to toss the plate into a corner. Hank took it from him and set it gently down on the other side of the bed. His gaze slid over Connor's stomach, a slight frown between his eyebrows. 

Lubricant glistened on exposed wiring and rubbery insulation. Thick, bundled cables were nestled snugly between the silicone-covered shapes of biocomponents. Connor's thirium pump regulator bathed them in diffuse light.

"Alright," Hank said. His voice didn't quite shake. He glanced up at Connor's face, tense and almost grim. When their eyes met he softened, stroking his thumb across Connor's hip. "What-- what do I do?"

"T-to-touch me," Connor managed. He tried to tilt his hips upwards, begging wordlessly for Hank's broad fingers. 

Hank's hands hovered, hesitant. Finally he licked his lips and leaned over Connor's prone form. "Okay," he said, more to himself than to Connor. 

His heartbeat was uneven. Uncertainty stuttered on his breath. But he reached for a long stretch of wiring that bisected Connor's abdomen, beside his thirium pump. He stroked two fingertips along the wires, careful but firm.

Connor sobbed. His body spasmed, shuddering. The single point of contact was like a clanging bell, flooding his RAM with warmth. 

Liquid fire licked along his overwrought nerves. It felt so good that he couldn't breathe. His chest stopped moving. He didn't have the strength to keep up the illusion, but maybe Hank wouldn't mind, not now--

And Hank was occupied, anyway. He was looking at his fingers curiously, rubbing them against his thumb to test the thin layer of fluid he'd picked up.

He put both hands on Connor's hips and stroked his thumbs along the edges of the gaping hole in Connor's chassis.

"Alright, uh," he said. He looked up at Connor, urgent but somehow almost calm, now that he'd made his decision. "Listen, Con, you gotta tell me if I... if I do something wrong. Okay?"

Connor nodded frantically. He would do anything, anything at all, so long as Hank _did not stop._ "I w-wi-will."

Hank put his hand into Connor's abdomen. Just placed it there, as much as he could fit--his fingers were curled over the edge of the hole. His big palm entirely covered biocomponent #6k24, whose pistons sped up in response, thrumming urgently against Hank's skin.

"Whoa," Hank said. He kept glancing back and forth between Connor's face and his own hand. 

For a moment he let the pistons vibrate against his touch. Then he pressed his fingers to #6k24's surface, feeling out its shape under the insulating layer of silicone.

Connor's voice box made a sound like whimpery static. It was only a touch, a single point of contact, but it felt _so good._

Warmth crackled outwards from Hank's fingers, the pervasive chill finally rubbed away by his hesitant caresses. Connor arched his back as best as he could, needing that hand even closer, _inside_ him, buried and flexing...

Hank clambered onto the bed. The mattress bounced under his weight. He moved to stretch out next to Connor, a solid wall that radiated heat. Connor turned his head towards him, unable to turn fully or even reach for him, with most of his fine motor control gone. He felt himself shake, wracking shivers that clacked his molars together.

"Hey," Hank said. He brushed his fingers over Connor's forehead, pushing aside that one stubborn curl of hair. "How you doin'?"

"G-good," Connor whispered. He tried to smile, to show Hank it was alright. Keeping his skin switched on and covering his chassis was getting increasingly harder. 

Hank kissed him, a careful press of his lips to the corner of Connor's mouth. His lips were soft, a little chapped from the cold winter air. 

Connor moaned into the kiss, opening his mouth for him. Hank licked his lower lip, leaving a swipe of saliva that Connor immediately sucked into his mouth, analyzing-- 

He found microscopic cookie crumbs and remains of toothpaste, traces of the coffee Hank had drunk just before they'd set out to question Shepard. Connor groaned at the taste, relieved when it came out sounding more or less human, with just a bit of static at the edges.

Hank's fingers trailed down Connor's chest until he reached the gap where Connor had torn off his abdominal plate off. He hesitated, then brushed the backs of his knuckles over the bumpy sheath of biocomponent #28k5.

The whorls of Hank's knuckles dragged over each individual bump and notch in the silicone, tugging at them for a delicious split-second before letting go. His fingers gleamed with lubricant.

Connor writhed. Sensory feedback shot up his spine. His nerves went pliant, melting with swelling pleasure. He was vaguely aware that he was making a noise, something between the whining rustle of scrambled audio and animal sounds of pleasure. But he couldn't stop. His sight overloaded itself with saturation, bringing out the blotchy red that'd risen in Hank's cheeks.

"Y-yes, oh, Ha-Hank," Connor choked out, his voice garbling into static, "p-p-please, please--"

A patch of gray plastic bled through his skin at his hip. He gritted his teeth and clawed at the sheets, struggling for control. It took him a few seconds to rematerialize the flesh-colored covering.

"Shh, I know." Hank patted his hip soothingly, and he got that focused look now, where he was setting his mind to a task and fully sinking into it. "I've got you."

Hank slipped his fingers between several supple strands of cables. They parted with slight reluctance, pulling tight around Hank's knuckles. The thirium pump regulator pulsed faster, bathing Hank's face in yellow light.

"Ahh," Connor groaned. His body convulsed, limbs flopping like a dead fish. 

He wanted to turn over, hold Hank's hand in place with shaking fingers. His grip would be tight around Hank's wrist, encouraging him to take hold of those cables and _pull._

Which would be dangerous, a little voice whispered in an unused corner of his RAM, far too dangerous... Hank was no technician, and even a trained professional might damage him with that kind of rough handling... 

And he didn't want anyone else's fingers in him anyway. He shuddered, the layered plastic of his chassis crawling with revulsion and fear, at the thought of a stranger, a cold-eyed CyberLife tech, rummaging around inside him.

"Jesus," Hank said. His voice was a little hoarse. "That's sensitive, huh?" He prodded the cables again, running his fingers over their smooth covering. His calluses rasped a little across the rubber.

"It's g-g-go-good," Connor ground out, struggling even with the monosyllabic word. His voice did not sound like his own. It was a jagged, broken thing, far removed from his usual passable pretense of humanity.

Hank followed the cables upwards, closer to the maddened flutter of Connor's heart. His insides made obscene slippery sounds as Hank's sliding touch picked up more fluid. Hank's face was a study in fascination. His touch was almost unbearably hot and tender, leaving trails of raw sensation in its wake.

"O-oh," Connor breathed. His shaking hadn't stopped completely. But its strength had eased, no longer gripping him quite so tight.

His body melted into the mattress. Perhaps this was what it felt like to release a long-held breath. Tension seeped out of him, a slow trickle.

Hank had him now. He held Connor's most vulnerable parts quite literally in his hands. Hank wouldn't let him fall.

"Okay," Hank said. He ran his fingers gently along a sharper edge of plastic, skimming a cluster of cables. "You just hold on, and tell me if you need me to stop, alright?"

"Y-yes, ahhh..." 

Connor tried to answer, but it cut off into a long moan. His innards couldn't move on their own, but he almost felt like they were straining eagerly towards Hank's touch, begging to be rubbed and pried apart.

Hank petted that bundle, his fingers wet with lubricant. They slid around easily, sending jolt after jolt of clenching pleasure through him.

"Yeah?" Hank whispered. His voice was rougher now. He fondled the thicker ports with their harder covering, rubbing the wires inside against their own insulation. 

Connor cried out, a wordless electronic gurgle. His thirium pump was struggling valiantly to keep up, hitching up its pace faster and faster.

Hank was getting excited. Connor heard his heart beat faster. His capillaries filled with blood, driving a deeper blush to his face. He shifted uncomfortably, spreading his thighs a little to accommodate the lazily growing bulge there. 

A tiny corner of Connor's mind felt astonished. Did Hank find this--him--attractive? How could he find something arousing in the inhuman squelch of Connor's insides around his fingers?

But Hank pulled gently on a silicone-covered piston, tentative and still so _gentle._ The lubricant made his fingers slick, and Connor lost a few seconds while he writhed, helpless and pinned by Hank's touch. 

Once again, his skin started to melt back into his chassis. His hip was exposed first, then patches of gray and white plastic appeared on his chest. 

"So-so-sorry," he groaned. He struggled to pull the fraying bits of his composure together, to cover himself once again in pinkish pseudoskin. "I c-c-can't..."

"Don't be sorry," Hank said immediately. "I told you, I don't care about your skin." He hesitated. His eyes were very blue, his pupils dilated, a furrow of concern between his brows. "Are you okay though? Should we--"

"Ke-keep going," Connor managed. He might have sounded desperate, but he was, he needed Hank's touch so badly that it hurt, a wire-thin ache in his teeth. "I'm f-f-fi-fine."

"Okay." Hank ran his hand down Connor's thigh, just to where he'd pulled his pants down. His slick fingers slipped easily across the smooth plastic. "Okay." 

The world narrowed to Hank's hands, his weight on the bed next to Connor--the barest brush of his breath against his cheek. Connor's senses slowed and sharpened, each detail thrown into stark relief. Every one of Hank's heartbeats reverberated through the bedding, vibrating faintly along Connor's chassis.

Hank's knuckles rubbed across a bundle of cords. He dug in a little, worming his fingertips deeper. The edge of a fingernail scraped gently against a particularly thin sheath of insulating rubber.

"Ah-ahh," Connor whimpered, his vision blurring. "H-Hank--" 

Confused impulses raced through his CPU. A flood of raw, unprocessed input hovered just out of reach, lapping at him like a wave. His throat ached with it, the edges of the hole in his stomach feeling hot and tender. 

His sense of gravity tilted. It felt like the bed was swaying. He moaned, struggling to clutch at the sheets.

Hank carefully worked his fingertips in between a few thicker cables, finding all sorts of new spots that hummed and woke under his touch. The slick on his knuckles had cooled somewhat, half-drying into a sticky film. But inside it was still warm, the lubricant growing hotter the deeper Hank went. 

Blurrily, Connor found a moment to hope it wasn't too hot for him--he could no longer tell how overheated he was; his internal temperature sensors spat out only strings of characters. He would hate to burn Hank's skin, even superficially.

But Hank didn't seem bothered by the hot wetness he found. His breath hitched a little. He rocked forward tentatively, prying wires apart until their sockets creaked, then withdrew.

Hank's touch left behind sparks of sensation. His mouth was half-open, his lower lip bitten red. The wires slid back, and the heated tingle flattened out into an urgent throb.

Hank licked his lips. "You look amazing like this," he said. 

His heartbeat skipped, hand stilling. He hadn't quite meant to say that out loud.

He cast a cautious glance up at Connor's face. At one point he'd placed his free hand on Connor's flank, a warm, welcome weight. Connor wanted to put his palm over Hank's broad knuckles, lace their fingers together. All he managed was a clench of his shaking fist in the sheets.

"Don't know what you've got to be self-conscious about," Hank said, gruff but sincere. "You're so-- shiny inside..."

Connor's voice box garbled out something like a snort. Hank moved his hand inside him, rubbing the heel of his palm over two intersecting ports. 

"Shut up," he said. "You try being witty when your android boyfriend shows you his guts for the first time..."

Connor laughed helplessly, a breathy chuckle that jostled Hank's hand inside him. His vocalizer fuzzed out into static, emitting a grinding moan. 

Hank touched biocomponent #3d90. He had to turn his wrist to reach its elongated shape, watching Connor's face carefully for any twitch of discomfort as his fingers went in deeper. 

"I googled it, you know," he said. "Android sex. Found some videos. I thought you'd tell me when you... but you didn't, and I..."

He let go of Connor's flank. He took Connor's weakly twitching hand and squeezed. His smile was warm and slightly rueful. "Should've talked to you, but. Didn't want to push."

"H-Hank," Connor managed. His fingers twitched as he tried to grasp Hank's hand in turn.

Hank's cock was a hard, heavy bulge in his trousers, stretching and filling the front of his jeans. His blood pressure had risen quite a bit, the blue of his eyes just a thin ring around his dilated pupils. He was undeniably aroused.

He ran the tips of his fingers along a few ports, feeling out their shapes. He stroked them in a firm caress, gentling his grip around the thick cables that jutted out, dragging a hot, wet trail of lubricant up the rubber.

Connor felt that trail, damp and thick, cooling where it stretched like syrup between the warm, buzzing metal of the port and Hank's fingertip. He whined, a thin, desperate noise, as a little drop of wetness slid down the attached cable. His chassis felt like it might just split apart entirely, spill his trembling, strung-out insides all over the bed for Hank to touch--

"Fuck," Hank said, his voice gravelly. He stared at Connor hungrily, drinking in his every reaction. "You're doing so good, Con. So good for me. Don't hold back, okay? I want you to come whenever you're ready."

Connor moaned and squirmed. Hot flashes chased each other across his plastic shell. His hair faded away, dematerializing just like most of his skin. He'd managed to hold on to a small patch above his left cheekbone, but the rest of him showed Hank the gray intersecting lines of how he'd been put together.

"Easy," Hank murmured. His voice vibrated into the hot, damp space between them, the soundwaves waking up miniscule clusters of sensors on Connor's chest. "I've got you."

Hank slid his fingers along silicone-covered cogs and massaged supple strands of cables. He found an untouched bundle of wires, and one of them burned as it begged for his touch, riding the edge of real pain.

Connor's breath, which he'd managed to keep up in intermittent gasps that did almost nothing to cool him down, caught hard in his chest. Hank rolled the cluster gently between his thumb and index finger. The metal wires pulsed helplessly as they were squeezed. 

And Connor was abruptly _there,_ right there on the edge of release, so close he could taste it at the back of his throat. 

"Y-yes, oh," he almost wailed, a high, inhuman sound that he couldn't control wrenching itself from his vocalizer, "p-please, yes--"

Then Hank was pressing in, rubbing firmly along the tapered edge of the attached port. His touch pulled on the cables, straining their wet, rubbery sheaths just right. Connor's limbs went limp and nerveless and he gasped in one last breath and flew apart.

His vision faded into a shower of white pixels. He writhed, his hips jerking, his body curling up off the bed, thrusting Hank's fingers brutally deep. That single, elusive wire trembled, white-hot and desperate. 

From somewhere, he heard Hank's startled intake of breath. "Whoa, hey," he said, starting to pull his hand out.

Short as his nails were, one of them scraped that wire. It wasn't much, but just enough. A pulse of unbearable heat seared along Connor's nerves, up to his cranium, where it imploded into a blinding wave that burned out his thoughts.

His internal clock ticked through one second, then two. Three.

Connor's sight grayed and froze. 

His antivirus program woke. It thrummed to vibrant life, like it hadn't been frozen and unresponsive for the past hour. A signal blared in Connor's mind as it sent out a system-wide alert.

Swarms of digital antibodies flooded towards the corruption, cordoning off the infected areas. The virus had flattened, going abruptly two-dimensional as its directive was fulfilled. Already flaking at the edges, it was no match for Connor's firewalls.

The back door was easy to find. He pried it open and peeled off the virus' clingy film. The red-black mass was swept away. The clean blue of his defenses ate up even the last stragglers.

Within the space of one breath, Connor's RAM cleared out. The error messages disappeared. His coolant pumps sprang back to life. A blessed chill started to circulate, rushing outwards into each one of his overheated limbs. 

A thick, cloying fog pulled back from his mind, his thoughts streamlining. Pink, mole dotted skin flowed back in to cover his chassis. He took a deep breath, and his fans turned on, sucking cooler air into his systems. 

_Internal temperature lowering. 168°F... 132°F..._

He reached out for Hank as color slid back into his vision. He sat up, ignoring the damp squelch of his insides, twitching a little when Hank's fingers brushed the sensitive seam along a silicone-covered cog. 

Hank was staring at him, his anxious gaze flickering across Connor's face. "Sorry," he said. He slipped his hand out of Connor, leaving a glistening trail of lubricant between them.

Even his voice was richer, deeper, absorbed by the full range of Connor's audio receptors. He could hear cars going past outside, slowed by the snow; Sumo in the kitchen, his breath sleep-slow and snuffling; Hank's heartbeat and the rush of his blood, his uneven breathing as he looked at Connor, searching.

"Hank," Connor said, just for the simple delight of being able to speak clearly again. 

He could move freely. His limbs responded without delay. His hands felt strong and capable as he reached for Hank's trousers. The urgent heat of Hank's cloth-covered erection caressed the sensors on his palms. His nimble fingers flicked open the button.

"Wait, hey," Hank said quickly. His voice was hoarse, his pupils blown wide with lust. He wiped his hand off on the sheets, leaving a shining streak. The sight sent a little jolt through Connor, a small echo of sensation. "Con? You with me?"

"Yes," Connor said. He gave Hank a small smile. "The virus is gone."

Hank's eyes searched his face, piercing and blue. His cock was visibly straining against the fly of his jeans but Hank ignored it. 

Instead he touched his fingertips cautiously to Connor's cheek. "Gone?" he repeated.

"My antivirus program took care of it." Connor exhaled, expelling the hotter air that'd clogged up his vents, and marveled that he was able to sit up and move, reach out to touch Hank, finally, finally back in control. "I'm fine."

Hank stared at him. "Wha-- just like that?"

Connor felt his smile widen on its own. A wave of affection rose in him. He toyed with the opened button of Hank's jeans just to feel him shiver. "I'm not human, Hank. It's not like a sickness I'd need to recover from."

"Well, good," Hank said, after some more staring. He reached out and ran his fingers through Connor's tousled hair, a soft caress. He swallowed hard. His eyes were bright. "I-- I got worried for a second there."

Connor leaned in and kissed him. Hank's mouth was wet and pliant, but firmed quickly under Connor's lips. Hank licked the seam of his mouth and Connor sighed, melting against him. Hank's saliva was 0.8 degrees hotter than it'd been, warmed by his elevated temperature. 

Random little jolts of aftershock still zapped and sparked on Connor's skin and down his back. His hands were as steady as ever, though, and he fit them around the clasp of Hank's belt.

"Connor, hey," Hank said, alarmed, when Connor slipped the lip through the metal and unbuckled his belt. "You don't have to, you..."

Connor felt a rush of fondness so potent that his breath hitched with it. Even flushed and sweaty, with his erection straining heavily against the fly of his pants, Hank took nothing for granted. 

"I know I don't have to," Connor said. "I want to."

He pressed his forehead to Hank's. Lanky hair rasped against his skin. Hank's sweat smelled salty and fresh, a contrast to the deeper musk of arousal that rose from between his legs.

Hank took nothing for granted, and Connor wouldn't either. He said, "Do you?"

Hank's belly was soft and pliant to the touch, the comfortable layers of fat hiding muscle. Connor would have liked to ruck up his shirt, coax Hank into raising his arms so he could pull it over his head. Instead he ran his hand down Hank's stomach, circling Hank's fabric-covered belly button.

Hank shivered a little. He kissed Connor, slow and deep, stroking Connor's tongue with his. His nose pressed against Connor's cheek, his breath puffing warm and damp between them.

"Yes."

Much like Connor had been before, Hank ended up on his back. Connor leaned over him, his olfactory sensors greedily sucking in the sharper hint of Hank's aftershave, the floral note of their fabric softener.

Connor unzipped his fly. Hank groaned and wriggled, spreading his legs as much as he could while still stuck in his jeans. His stomach heaved with quick breaths. His cock snugly filled out the front of his boxers, a hot, heavy bulge that bobbed a little when Connor brushed his knuckles over it.

"Don't tease, Con," he said hoarsely.

"I won't," Connor promised. 

He put his free hand to Hank's sternum. He loved feeling his heartbeat there, under the softness of fat and muscle. He liked cranking the sensitivity of his sensors up almost as high as it would go. It was better skin to skin, but Hank was breathing harshly, almost desperate already, and Connor estimated that there was an 87% chance that he did not have the patience to let him remove his shirt.

So Connor made do with the soft rasp of fabric against his fingertips, and Hank's heartbeat under that. 89 BPM, blood pressure rising further. The vibration of Hank's pulse resonated in the bones of his sternum, filtering through to Connor's fingers. His heart throbbed needily against his palm as he pulled Hank's penis out of his boxers.

It was flushed and hard, leaking at the tip. Connor stared with unabashed hunger, and Hank let out a little half-embarrassed sigh, his head falling back into the pillows.

No matter how often they'd had sex, Connor didn't think he would ever quite get enough of the sight before him--the most vulnerable part of Hank, blood-flushed and hard for him. For _Connor,_ a machine. 

The _corpus cavernosum_ had filled with hot blood, lengthening and engorging Hank's cock. The swelling had pushed the foreskin almost all the way back, exposing the sensitive head.

Connor hummed appreciatively, tightening his hold for a moment just to hear the stutter in Hank's breathing. But he'd promised not to tease, so he swiped his palm over the glans in the way he knew Hank liked and got to work.

Hank's penis felt hot and familiar in his hand. He pumped his hold up and down, setting up a rhythm on just this side of slow that had Hank groaning in frustration. He made up for it with the tightness of his grip, making sure to squeeze just under the head. Copious precome beaded at the tip, slicking the way for Connor's hand.

"Hank," Connor said. He lowered his voice a little and hoped he was hitting a register that Hank found attractive. He pressed a kiss to his upper lip, his lips tingling at the scrape of Hank's mustache.

He sighed against Hank's mouth. "Do you know how good you made me feel?" 

He wasn't sure where the words came from--there would be ample time to discuss the afternoon's proceedings once Hank had ejaculated. But it seemed important somehow to say it now.

"Oh, fuck, Connor," Hank said shakily. He'd clenched his hand in the sheets. His breathing stuttered.

Connor twisted his hand on the upstroke, rubbing his palm firmly over the ridge just under the head of Hank's cock. Hank shivered all over. His heart beat faster, squeezing heated blood through him. 

"Do you?" Connor asked. He leaned over to kiss Hank's cheek, his beard, and Hank made a high, desperate noise and turned his head slightly to catch Connor's mouth with his. His eyes fluttered shut and he tilted his hips up, chasing the slicked friction of Connor's fingers rubbing over his frenulum.

"I've got an idea, yeah," he gasped. His brow furrowed as he squirmed. "Fuck, Connor, _please."_

Connor's abdominal plate still lay abandoned on the other side of the bed. Some excess lubricant slipped out of him, a single thick drop of it running down his hip. The air felt cold and uncomfortable on his exposed insides. 

He didn't care, _couldn't_ care, not when Hank was writhing under him, completely at his mercy. The sight and feeling of him filled Connor to the brim and took up even the furthest recesses of his RAM.

"You were so good to me," Connor said. His own voice sounded shaky in his ears. _"So_ good, Hank. You were incredible."

Hank's cock swelled and firmed. He bit his lip hard, whitening the sensitive skin. Connor slid his foreskin over the glans and started twisting his wrist a little on each upstroke, paying special attention to the head. 

He knew what Hank liked. Perhaps that should've made sex with him predictable, but instead it was only rewarding. Something in Connor glowed warm and fierce when they were together like this, when Connor listened to Hank's heart and his fingers went slick with Hank's precome, something deeply satisfied.

"F-fuck," Hank gritted out through his teeth. Both his hands had fisted in the sheets now. The fabric creaked under his unforgiving grip. Little beads of sweat had collected on his forehead. 

Connor leaned his forehead against Hank's temple. "You're so _good,"_ he whispered. His throat felt thick, illogically--he had no vocal chords to clog with emotion. "I-- I love you."

Hank choked on a sobbed breath and came. His hips jolted forward and his cock pulsed in Connor's fist. Pearly white seed spilled over Connor's fingers. Connor worked him through it, gentling his hold and providing a slick circle of fingers for Hank to thrust into. Hank whimpered, hips stuttering as he chased the last few pulses of his climax.

Connor tugged on his cock, just enough to coax out a last spurt of come. Hank moaned and flinched, his heart thudding fast and deep under Connor's fingers on his chest. 112 BPM, now, and Connor knew it would be approximately another minute until his heartbeat would calm. 

Hank's face was flushed from his elevated blood pressure, chest heaving with quick but slowing breaths.

"Jesus," he said. His voice scratched roughly in his throat. One of his hands came up and he placed it over Connor's where it rested on his chest.

Connor breathed him in, the salty tang of sweat and ejaculate that hung heavy in the air of their bedroom. The tips of Hank's hair brushed his nose, producing a sensation that a human might have described as ticklish. "Good?"

"Yeah." Hank turned his head. He put his hand on Connor's cheek, stroking his thumb over the soft patch of hair at his temple. "You okay?"

Connor couldn't help but smile a little. Even in the warm, fuzzy haze after orgasm, Hank was concerned about him, making sure he was alright. "Yes."

Hank groaned as he moved, his back popping. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at him. It was 3:57pm. The daylight was dimming, and Connor turned up the sensitivity of his optical sensors. He didn't want to miss a single second of this to the grainy dark that overlaid itself across shadows at this time of day.

Not when Hank was looking at him like this, with nearly unguarded sweetness. Perhaps he didn't realize that Connor was unaffected by the low light. He stroked Connor's cheek again, almost shy.

Then he touched his thumb to Connor's chin to tilt his face up. Hank kissed him, sliding their mouths together in a warm, sensuous caress. 

The laws of gravity did not change. Neither did his own mass. But somehow, Connor thought that he almost understood what humans meant when they sank deeper into a welcoming mattress at the end of a long day. Tension unspooled in him, leaving him in a slow rush. 

He did not care how many seconds passed, though his internal clock ticked faithfully onwards. Hank's mouth was so warm and damp, so gentle and simply welcoming... 

Hank stroked his hand down Connor's side, pausing at the hole. Their lips detached with a damp smack, and Hank glanced towards the discarded piece of Connor's plastic covering.

"Uh, Con?" he said, hesitant. He patted Connor's hip. His thumb grazed the edge of the gap in his chassis. "We should probably put that back on."

Connor laughed.

***

Connor's head was a warm, heavy weight on Hank's shoulder. The flank under his hand rose and fell with soft, imitated breaths.

It was still snowing. Dusk had fallen, quite fast in midwinter as always. It wasn't even 5pm, but the street lamps were already on, lighting up the endless fall of snowflakes in orange and yellow. 

Cars went past occasionally. Their headlights drifted in thin stripes across the ceiling. He'd drawn the blinds against the dark. 

They'd both padded barefoot into the kitchen, where they startled Sumo awake from a nap. Connor had knelt to pet him, burying his hands in coarse fur with a little murmur, and Hank had taken a beer and a bottle of thirium out of the fridge. 

They'd drunk together, side by side at the kitchen counter, their hips bumping companionably. The kitchen had been a small island of light in the dark house. The old lamp's golden glow gave a rosy sheen to Connor's skin that was probably entirely manufactured, but that Hank couldn't help but find charming anyway.

"And you're _sure_ you're okay?" he'd asked, again, unable to help himself.

After the third time, Connor's mouth had tilted downwards in mild annoyance. But the hand he'd put on Hank's shoulder had been gentle. "Yes," he said. "Completely fine. I'll run another diagnostic if it'll make you feel better."

"Please do." Hank cleared his throat. "Can't have you keeling over with no warning."

"Of course," Connor said, with that wry tilt to his smile.

Just then, Hank hadn't had the strength of will to squash his more sentimental impulses. He looped one arm around Connor's shoulders, leaned in and kissed his LED. 

He'd just let his lips rest there for a moment. It took a second for him to breathe Connor in--the scent of their laundry detergent on the t-shirt he'd borrowed from Hank, the faintly synthetic odor that clung to his skin.

He still smelled of burned plastic. Every time Hank caught a whiff of it, his stomach clenched a little, but he told himself firmly to stop worrying. His next shower would sluice the smell off of him. Connor had _said_ he was fine, and his LED glowed a placid blue.

Thank fucking Christ they'd come out of this alive and intact. Everything had happened so fast. First there'd been Shepard's shithole of a shop, Connor falling and hitting his head in the back room, lying still and silent on their bed... 

It was only now, in the warm semi-darkness of their bedroom, with Connor resting beside him, that it dawned on Hank how lucky they'd been.

Connor could have died. If Fowler had put them on different shifts... If he'd gone on patrol without Hank, if the virus had taken him in the presence of hapless officers who didn't know how to access the port at the back of his neck... 

\--And Hank would've returned to the station to find Connor's body being fussed over in IT, his eyes dull and lifeless, his processors melted beyond repair...

Hank breathed out slowly, shifting his shoulders to loosen the tightness in his chest. 

He'd have to keep Connor close for a few days. Maybe he could even extract a promise from him not to touch any strange terminals for a while. He wasn't normally the possessive type, but the terror of being forced to press Connor's reset button was still too fresh. 

God, the way he'd writhed under his own touch, helpless and burning up, and Hank had just hovered helplessly, unable to do anything...

And now they'd had sex--the android way, for the first time--and Connor had been... he'd been under duress, barely coherent, too far gone to truly consent... and Hank hadn't known what to do except what Connor told him to, because they'd raced against the clock and the virus had been burning him alive...

"Hank?" Connor said, jarring him back to the present. His eyes were open. He'd placed his palm on Hank's chest, likely feeling out the uneven beat of his heart. 

"Yeah," Hank said. He cleared his throat. 

Connor was still here. That was what counted. He didn't act spooked or shocky. He'd downed his thirium with the same neat sips as always, and put the bottle in the sink the same way Hank had seen him do dozens of times. And Hank couldn't let himself go off the deep end imagining what might have happened. 

"Any, uh..." Hank hesitated, but only for a moment. He spoke against Connor's temple, lips moving against the soft skin. "Any... regrets?"

Connor leaned back and away. He gave Hank a searching, narrow-eyed look. His forehead creased with concern. 

Hank almost snorted. What had _he_ done to deserve being fussed over?

"None," Connor said simply. "None at all."

"Oh," Hank said. He stared at Connor somewhat dumbly, the wind taken out of his sails. "You, uh... you sure?"

 _"Yes,"_ Connor said, again with that hint of exasperation. 

His hand had pressed a little harder against Hank's chest. He spread his fingers out wide, as if he was trying to coax Hank's heart back to its regular rhythm.

"Oh," Hank said again, like an idiot. His face felt warm. 

He covered Connor's hand with his bigger, meatier one, stroking a thumb over the back of Connor's hand. "Okay. Just checking."

Connor studied him, his gaze a little distant. He was probably scanning Hank's brainwaves or some shit like that. Then he sighed and relented, settling back down.

He'd closed his eyes again. Hank looked down at his dark eyelashes, the freckles on his cheeks that he couldn't see in the dim light but that he knew were there. He could've mapped them out blind.

He wasn't sure how long Connor would rest against him. His head was heavy on Hank's biceps. Connor might have insisted he was fine, but there was a certain tiredness about him that Hank had rarely ever seen.

Ingesting thirium had made him slightly sleepy. It didn't affect him every time, only when Connor had been overdue for a dose of the stuff. Hank took a moment to feel grateful that he'd known that already. If he'd never seen Connor tired before, he surely would have freaked the fuck out now, after their ordeal.

Sumo was lying across the foot of the bed. He'd flopped down on top of the covers with a satisfied grunt. Now he was dozing, a warm, solid weight on their entangled feet.

"Why did you say that back there?" Hank asked. He stroked a slow rhythm over Connor's side. "About being... palatable?"

Connor didn't tense up or anything. Perhaps if he had, Hank might have taken back the question. But Connor wasn't human; he would not cringe at an unexpected blow to a secret insecurity. He just stayed loose and relaxed. 

"I simply felt it was accurate," he said.

The words were measured, but not slow. Hank let out a breath: of course Connor had thought about this beforehand, and was only now letting Hank know. 

"I had never exposed myself to you, after all. You've seen androids without their skin and chassis before, but I thought from me it would be jarring."

Hank looked at him. He'd pulled the covers up around them, taking care to tuck them tightly against Connor's shoulder even if Connor technically didn't mind the cold the way a human would have.

"No," Hank said, as firmly as he could. He meant it, and he needed Connor to know that. "It's not-- I don't fucking care about your skin. Or that you got off by letting me fondle your guts."

Connor snorted softly. He nuzzled Hank's collarbone. "Most people would see a problem with that."

"No, they wouldn't," Hank said. "There's more of us android fuckers than you think."

Connor lifted his head again and gave Hank a slightly bleary stare. Yeah, he was definitely tired. "Android fuckers?"

Hank smirked at him, though he kept the trail of his fingers over Connor's flank slow and gentle. "You heard me."

 _Now_ Connor tensed, the contrary little shit. It was nothing big, just a subtle hardening of his sprawl against Hank's side. He tucked his face against the side of Hank's neck and went quiet. 

From this angle, Hank couldn't see Connor's LED, but he imagined it was circling yellow as he processed that. It had to be a whole fucking lot. 

Getting dosed with a virus that made him sex-crazy, almost killed him, and facilitated the first time he'd shown Hank his innards... yeah, Hank would be taking a breather in his stead as well.

Hank was content to wait with him. A thread of worry squirmed in him, urging him to say something else--explain, apologize, ask him again if he was feeling alright... He squashed the urge. Connor wasn't a child, and he hated being coddled. He had told him he felt fine and Hank believed him.

A few minutes ticked past. Doubtlessly, Connor could've told him exactly how much time was passing. The yellow glow of the street lamps seemed to brighten as the powdery daylight faded further. At their feet, Sumo's legs twitched as he dreamed of chasing rabbits, or perhaps just of taking a long leisurely walk to his food bowl.

He thought maybe Connor had fallen asleep. As an android, he was incapable of true sleep, but he had several layers of energy-saving and defragmenting modes that he could engage. 

He wasn't moving. Even his breaths had stopped. No warm air brushed against Hank's jaw.

Hank jostled him slightly. "Hey," he said, softly. "That okay with you?"

Connor sighed. He relaxed, leaning his head against Hank's shoulder. "Yes."

Hank wrapped his arm more firmly around him. Connor stirred under the covers, just enough to throw one arm around Hank in turn. He squeezed him briefly, perhaps a bit clumsily, before bringing his hand up to rest on Hank's heart, his favorite spot.

Connor breathed through several cycles. The air that brushed Hank's jaw felt warm and dry. Some of the electronic smell had faded. 

Finally Connor said, very quietly, "I'm glad."

Hank's heart leaped into his throat. It pounded there, rabbit fast like he was a teenager again, and not a 53-year-old pervert who'd just... gut-fucked his android boyfriend.

"Love you," Hank said gruffly. It still wasn't easy for him to get out, but he tried hard to say it more often. It was true, and Connor deserved to hear it.

Connor's fingers curled against his chest. A deep breath puffed against his throat.

Hank settled in with a sigh, ready to doze a little. He'd have to get up again to eat at some point, but he wouldn't say no to some shut-eye...

Connor's systems thrummed softly against his ribs. His simulated breathing shut off once in a while, and Hank figured he didn't have to cool himself down quite so much anymore as his temperature regulated itself back down to normal levels. 

A noise cut through the silence, loud and grating: Hank's phone rang. 

Hank groaned under his breath. He didn't move. Connor was so warm, and Sumo was so heavy on their feet, and whoever was calling him could go fuck themselves. He let it go to voicemail.

For a moment there was blessed silence. Then it rang again. 

"For fuck’s sake," Hank muttered. He groped around for the phone, hitting the two empty, crusted coffee mugs on the nightstand, trying hard not to jostle Connor.

It was the precinct's number, with Ben's extension. Hank swiped to accept the call and pressed the phone to his ear, hoping that their voices wouldn't wake Connor.

"Hey," Ben said, urgent and without preamble. "How's Connor?"

Hank blinked. It took him a moment to realize that Ben didn't yet know that the virus was gone.

It felt supremely odd to remember that there were others who knew about the infected terminal. There were whole squadrons of nerds in IT who'd analyzed the thing. In the privacy of their bedroom, Hank had quite forgotten about them.

"Fine," he said automatically.

There was a pause. "So he's okay?" Ben asked, baffled. Something rustled in the background, but the precinct was noticeably quieter at this hour. "He's not... he didn't overheat?"

Well. Hank felt his face grow warm--how would he explain this? He'd been so preoccupied with the aftermath... getting some thirium into Connor, making sure he was doing okay... He hadn't thought to talk to him about what they would tell their colleagues. 

They hadn't agreed on a story or anything. Without Connor's input, Hank didn't feel comfortable lying about a miraculous recovery, some cutting-edge antiviral software that'd rested hidden on Connor's harddrives.

He cleared his throat, acutely aware of how long the silence had stretched. "Nope."

Ben hesitated, probably taken aback by Hank's shortness. Hank listened to his breathing, the muted noises of the station on the background. He could almost hear the wheels turning in Ben's head.

Then he said carefully, "I figure you wouldn't sound so chipper if he'd shut down."

"No," Hank said. He cleared his throat and fought the urge to squirm. "I wouldn't."

There was a long silence. In the background, somebody wished Ben a nice evening. Distant laughter filtered through the speaker. A door slammed somewhere.

Hank could almost hear Ben cycle through different comments and observations and discard them all. He waited, a little apprehensive despite himself, pressing the phone tightly to his ear.

Finally Ben let out a beleaguered sigh, heavy with all the things he had just realized. Hank suppressed a smile. 

"The less I know about that the better," Ben said wearily. He sounded like he was smiling. "Tell him I'm glad he's okay."

"Thanks," Connor said, muffled against Hank's neck, and Hank just about had a heart attack.

"Jesus Christ," he said, his pulse pounding. He craned his neck to look down at Connor, but saw only tousled hair. "I thought you were having a nap."

Connor rubbed his cheek against Hank's shoulder. "I do not nap," he said.

"Fucking androids," Hank said.

Connor raised his head enough to give him a small, smug smile. "I believe you just did."

Ben coughed. _"Anyway,"_ he said quellingly, "Shepard confessed. About the Red Ice dealing and the virus. Said it was a personal project. We can get him on assaulting an officer if Connor wants to press charges."

"Good," Hank said. He felt some vindication at the thought of Shepard going behind bars. He tightened his hold on Connor. The bastard had nearly killed him.

"That, uh, that was all," Ben said. He coughed again. "Just wanted to give you an update."

"Sure," Hank said. Connor nudged him. He sighed and said, "Hey, thanks. Tell IT good job from me, okay?"

"Will do," Ben said. "And you two--" He hesitated, then said, "Rest up a bit, yeah?"

"Sure," Hank said. "See you tomorrow, Ben."

He tapped the screen to end the call and put his phone back on the nightstand, not even looking when it clattered against the empty coffee cups. He clicked on the lamp, though, and its warm light suffused the room.

Hank watched the play of deep shadows across the wrinkles in the blanket. Connor was an unmoving lump under the covers, curled tightly against Hank's side.

"Hey," he said. At some point his hand had started to stroke Connor's side again, a slow, hypnotic trail of his fingers. "You promised me you'd run a diagnostic."

"Another one," Connor said, long-suffering. When Hank opened his mouth again he relented, though, and patted Hank's chest. "Okay, I will."

His body went rigid with the same peculiar stillness that gripped him whenever he was doing something to his systems. His LED cast a blinking, yellow sheen across the bed. Hank couldn't see Connor's face, but he knew that his eyes would be half-closed, glazed and unseeing. His fingers twitched a little, like a human caught in a dream.

Connor wasn't a human succumbing to sleep to fight off an infection. Still, Hank got the confused impulse to hold Connor close when he did this, to run a soothing thumb over the jut of his shoulder to let him know Hank would watch over him while he was incapacitated.

While Connor was preoccupied, Hank allowed himself a long sigh. He wiped his free hand down his face and blinked up at the ceiling. 

They were still here. Connor was fine. A solid night of sleep, and Hank would be, too. All he needed was to feel Connor next to him, solid and warm.

At their feet, Sumo had begun to snore softly. Hank let himself relax, content to listen to the scraping noise that was Connor's processors at work and that Hank only picked up because they were so close.

The house was quiet around them. Hank rested his cheek against Connor's hair and closed his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up 18 months late with Starbucks* 'sup
> 
> I started writing this fic in... August 2018? and finished the first draft about a year later. As such, there are probably about 800 HankCon sex pollen fics out there by now, but listen. Listen. [Two cakes.](https://sqbr.tumblr.com/post/92103436228/the-artist-putting-a-simple-cake-next-to-a-much) (is what I tell myself, as I worry _once again_ whether all my writing is redundant.)
> 
> Thanks to the incomparable [fowo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fowo/pseuds/fowo) for the beta! I _really_ struggle with this whole "but everyone & their dog has already written [trope] fic so mine is _useless!"_ mindset sometimes & Fo's encouragement is what made me finish & post this story anyway. <3
> 
> The title is from "How Loud Your Heart Gets" by Lucius.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! ♥


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